Pilot saves over 150 lives with 'textbook ditching' into the Hudson
River

Plunged out of the sky ... passengers stand on the emergency exit chutes and wings of the plane after it crashed into the Hudson River. Bottom left, the pilot, Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger III and bottom right, FlightAware shows the plane's flight path.

Mr Sullenberger walked the plane twice to verify if anyone was on board before getting out himself

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Former fighter pilot Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger
III has saved the lives of more than 150 people after safely
guiding a plane into the freezing waters of New York's Hudson
River, moments after a
flock of birds reportedly cut the jet's engines.

US Airways Flight 1549 left LaGuardia Airport just after 3.26pm
on Thursday (7.26am AEDT today) and was headed for Charlotte,
North Carolina.

The plane was in flight for three minutes before it got into
trouble, media reports say.

In what is being described as a controlled "textbook ditching",
the US Airways pilot turned around the Airbus A320 when it ran into
trouble and flew it tail-down into the river just after 3.30pm.

As the plane floated in the river, 150 passengers, four crew
members and the pilot on board climbed out of the emergency exits
and stood on the wings and floating exit chutes.

Pilot named

The pilot has been named as Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger
III, a former fighter pilot with the US Air Force and 40-year
veteran of the aviation industry, according to the web site of his
consulting firm, Safety Reliability Methods.

Mr Sullenberger's curriculum vitae states that he has been a
pilot with US Airway since 1980. Before that he spent seven years
flying F4 fighter jets with the US Air Force.

"It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing
the plane in the river, and then making sure everybody got out,"
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

ABC quoted the mayor as saying Mr Sullenberger "walked the plane
twice to verify if anyone was on board" before getting out
himself.

'First successful ditching of commercial passenger
plane'

The president of the Australian and International Pilots
Association, Barry Jackson, said he believed this was the first
successful ditching of a commercial passenger plane ever.

An online forum for pilots was buzzing in the wake of the
incident, with many contributers also speculating that this was the
first time a passenger jet had successfully ditched without loss of
life.

"Ditching" is an intentional emergency landing in water. It
appears to happen occasionally in the military and with smaller
aircraft in general aviation but is understood to be extremely rare
for commercial passenger jets.

Aircraft have ditched previously, but these were either military or
small aircraft or had not been accomplished successfully without
loss of life, it is believed.

Witness watched plane descend

West New York resident William Duckworth said he watched the plane
descend into the river.

Mr Duckworth told the Herald: "The landing itself was very
controlled. The pilot still had some control over the plane.

"The nose, he kept it up, and [the plane] went into the water
tail first and that spun it around about 45 degrees but it
continued to float."

British aviation expert James Ferguson told the BBC he had never
seen anything like it.

"If you hit water fairly hard, as you will do with an aircraft,
it tends to break up. But this aircraft seems to be virtually
undamaged," Mr Ferguson said.

British Airways pilot Eric Moody told Sky News in England that
the landing was a "textbook ditching".

"That very rarely happens, unless you are near a runway. Whoever
has flown that has done a really good job," Mr Moody said.

It is believed a bird or flock of birds hit the plane less than
three minutes after take-off and disabled two of its engines.

The temperature in New York City at the time was -6 degrees
Celsius, The New York Times reported. The water
temperature in the Hudson River was just below 6 degrees
Celsius.

An aviation website that provides live tracking of flights,
FlightAware, showed the flight plummeting minutes before it crashed
into the river.

The log shows the plane rising to 3200 feet at 3.27pm, before
dropping 2000 feet to 1200 feet in just two minutes.

The last entry, at 3.31pm, shows the flight had fallen to 300
feet.

Flight paths also show the pilot tried to turn the aircraft back
towards the airport but was forced to land it in the river as it
fell.

Witness Barbara Sambriski, said, "I just thought, 'Why is it so
low?' And, splash, it hit the water."

A passenger identified as Alberto and interviewed on CNN said he
escaped through one of the forward doors. He said that,
shortly after take-off, there was a loud bang and the cabin smelled
of smoke.

"We knew we were going down, then we just hit the water. Somehow
the plane stayed afloat," he said. "I can't believe he somehow
managed to land that plane safely. It's a near death experience
that thankfully did not turn out that way."

He said the time between impact and people leaving the
plane was "less than a minute". After some initial panic, people
calmed down once they realised they were going to escape.

Mr Duckworth, who lives across the river from New York City,
said he watched the plane fall.

"My wife and I were talking and we just happened to look out the
window and we saw the plane flying at about rooftop level ... that
was so strange, we were mesmerised, and we just watched it then go
into the river."

He said the plane travelled about half a mile between when he
first spotted it and when it hit the water.

"There were a lot of ferries that got to it very quickly, four
or five that got to it almost immediately," he said.

Another survivor Fred Beretta reportedly said: "The engine blew
out then the pilot turned around and made a line for the river.
There was silence and everyone was waiting for what the pilot would
say. A few minutes went by and he said: 'Prepare for impact.' Then
we went into the water. You could smell the smoke."

Janis Krums, from Florida, was leaving New York on a ferry when
the ferry diverted to rescue passengers on the crashed plane.

"There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick
up the people. Crazy," he wrote on his twitter page.

Mr and Mrs Duckworth took binoculars down to the river bank and
watched as passengers poured out of the plane on to emergency exit
chutes.

"I saw some passengers getting out of the plane and walking up a
gang plank and then I saw other passengers walking along the wing,
which by that time was a little bit under the water," he said.

"Then the tide changed and the plane started floating down the
river, so I'm looking out of the [same] window now and it's
completely out of sight."

Government officials say they have ruled out terrorism as a
cause of the incident.

Plunged out of the sky ... passengers stand on the emergency exit chutes and wings of the plane after it crashed into the Hudson River. Bottom left, the pilot, Chesley Burnett &quot;Sully&quot; Sullenberger III and bottom right, FlightAware shows the plane's flight path.

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